This invention relates generally to pen-based computing systems, and more particularly to recording audio in a pen-based computing system.
When trying to absorb a large amount of information delivered orally and possibly visually, such as in a business meeting or classroom setting, people commonly use a pen to take notes on paper. However, once disembodied from the oral presentation in which they were taken, even good notes lose much of their meaning because the context for the notes has been lost. For this reason, people often record a presentation as well as take notes. Since people commonly use a pen to take the notes, it is convenient to incorporate a microphone into the pen. In smart pen computing system, for example, a microphone may be embedded into the smart pen to record audio data while the user takes notes.
However, mobile audio recording devices typically use a single microphone that has not been tuned to the physical environments where the recording takes place. Additionally, these microphones typically are used to record a single audio source (e.g. classroom lecturer) but often in a setting where there may be multiple other audio sources (e.g. fellow classmates in the lecture). In addition, small audio recording devices, such as may be embedded into a pen, typically lack acceptable far field recording capabilities. As a result, in an environment where there are multiple sources of audio (e.g. a meeting room with several people, or a classroom where the lecturer and fellow classmates are speaking simultaneously) or where the desired source is at some distance from the recording device, it can be difficult to identify the desired source when the recorded audio is replayed.
Accordingly, new approaches to recording audio are needed to fill the needs unmet by existing methods.